A shared ontology is a special kind of ontology that allows multiple organizations to collaborate on shared workflows. Shared ontologies live under a dedicated shared space created specifically for the workflow. A shared ontology enables resources from multiple organizations to be used in a workflow, whereas an ontology is private to one organization and contains resources from that organization alone.
A shared ontology is automatically created when a new shared space is created. It holds the same organizations markings and role grants as the shared space.